Davos days
This year the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Annual Meeting 2001 urged participants to “Sustain Growth by Bridging the Divides”. Olivero Toscani produced a stark and remarkable documentary as a graphic reminder of what the divide is, images of modern technological advances, space travel, aircraft, computers, etc superimposed by the drawn and haggard faces of the hungry, under-nourished, emaciated and the diseased, moving the assembled hard-bitten and (even some) callous to tears. To quote Dr Klaus Schwab, “business has to make a special contribution to the effort to establish a world where everybody — each global citizen — can live a dignified existence”.
The principal themes at Davos this year were, viz (1) staying ahead of the Digital and Biotech Revolution (2) Advancing the Global Agenda (3) the Corporation of the 21st Century and its CEO (4) the World Economic Outlook (5) mapping out Regional Trends (6) Ethics and Values that shape Society, and last but not the least (7) the Potential within us. The diversity of issues represented a cross-section of the 60 or so subjects available to the participants. Traditionally DAVOS has a keynote speaker, this year it was the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, a frequent visitor as a UN functionary in previous DAVOS meetings. In his turn, Japanese PM Mori annunciated the corrective measures Japan has been taking for the last decade to ward off recession that could lead to economic apocalypse, not only for Japan but most of Asia’s Third World.
Conceivably the most comprehensive meeting of diverse disciplines and minds in the world, connecting ideas and people, DAVOS is usually many, many years ahead the rest of the world. Those who talked about commercializing the Internet in 1994 before it really started to make an impact on people’s lives and the stock market returned to Davos in 1998 as millionaires many times over. The occasion is also famous for many one-to-one not-so-public discussions between those otherwise engaged in conflict, the Arafat-Shimon Peres, the Armenia-Azerbaijan meetings being some of them. Social and cultural leaders tend to test their ideas here before taking them to the world stage. Countries, corporations, organizations, individuals, etc all have benefited from their top leaders “connecting” in the six days at Davos every year in a true gathering of eagles.
Heads of State and Government of the Third World actively engage in soliciting investment for their respective countries, cognizance of this tremendous opportunity to “connect” with leaders of countries and captains of industry and commerce, must be taken at the highest level by the nation’s leadership. This super environment creates political and economic options that could be used to good advantage for the country. The Chief Ministers of India’s States take turns visiting Davos, Chandrababu Naidu of Andhra Pradesh had in previous years collared Bill Gates of Microsoft in Davos to invest heavily in his State, the partnership is already an ongoing success. This year Digvijay Singh of Madhya Pradesh was busy trying to emulate Andhra Pradesh in attracting foreign investment. Pakistan was officially represented this year (as was last year) by Ministers Shaukat Aziz and Altaf Saleem, long-time WEF members in their own individual capacities. One is grateful for the almighty that Pakistani officials with “stretched” limousines plying Davos’ one road have not reappeared since 1995. The Minister do create awareness for Pakistan but despite their personal PR they are no substitute to having the head honcho in Davos. We must correct this anomaly of not using the true potential of this great economic opportunity.
Since last year organized protest has been targeting Davos’ “robber barons”, the 2000 or so elite who gather are said to own 80% of the world’s wealth. Last year violent demonstrators damaged, among other places, a McDonalds restaurant. The WTO debate in Seattle and the IMF siege at Prague ensured that security was much tighter than last year, frustrated by their effort to force their way up the one road to Davos, Zurich took the brunt of the protesters’ anger. With over 30 of the world’s Heads of state and government, with almost every country represented at the very least by a Minister, with almost every head of major industrial, commercial and academic entities in the world at Davos security problems can become a nightmare. The organizers of the WEF had tried to accommodate the dissent by including at least 30 of the NGOs into regular meetings of the WEF, in the crisis this turned out to be an exercise of the deaf for the time being as the WEF establishment and the NGOs clashed publicly. Dissenting points of view need to be debated, that is the only way to avoid confrontation becoming violent, however professional protesters have a habit of turning any de-tente into anarchy.
One of DAVOS’ problems is adherence to NORTH themes rather than that of the SOUTH. In a Session about “Justice” entitled “You can run but you cannot hide” moderated by James Hoge of the “Council on Foreign Relations” with panelists including Chief Prosecutor International War Crimes Tribunal Ms Carla del Ponte and US Sen Orrin Hatch, concerns where raised that those who took part in genocide could go scot-free unless the agreement about International Criminal Court was ratified. Sen Hatch raised the question of sovereignty because of the possibility that those who demonize the US may seek to target US citizens simply because they do not like the US. When it was suggested that the mandate should include corruption among leaders of the South, living mostly off their loot in greener pastures of the North and protected by laws resisting their extradition to their home countries (and more importantly their illegal funds remaining out of the reach of the countries that had been looted), the panel chose not to answer at first. Only on repeated prompting Ms Carla del Ponte volunteered that this type of corruption had to be focussed on in the same manner as terrorism and genocide.
Davos was made famous by Thomas Mann’s book “Magic Mountain” as being home to a number of TB Sanatoriums. Young men and women from all over the world would come here for treatment, the not so fortunate are buried here making the graveyards an international meeting place of sorts for over a century. German soldiers who contracted TB in the trenches of World War I were sent here by the German Army. Very startling are the scientific discovery of the cells of the “human gnome” and its possibilities, as well as the ideas of “teleportation”, still far away from “Energizing” a la “Star Trek” but a glimmer of possibility nevertheless. The Dinner Session on “Philanthropy” was amazing, something else. Many of the world’s business leaders and their spouses are actively involved in using profits taken from business in organized charity, geared mostly to education and health. The consensus was that philanthropy would increase dramatically as the heirs of US fortunes would liquidate the holdings of their fathers and grandfathers and use it for the succour of the impoverished in the not-so-developed world. Ted Turner of CNN (and Time Warner) last year called for more charity by the elite during their lifetimes instead of donating their wealth for charitable purposes after their death, otherwise he politely asked them to die earlier.
Moritz Leuenberger, President of the Swiss Federation, quoted the French Revolution slogan. “Liberte, Equalite, Fraternite”, being applicable even today, saying “you cannot have freedom without equality and justice,” Speakers at the opening Session were impressive. A very logical and lucid presentation on “The Role of Islam in Bridging the Religious Divide” was given by His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, the Ruler of Qatar and current Chairman OIC. President Mkapa of Tanzania, Agriculture Minister de Moraes of Brazil, Deputy PM Panitchpakdi of Thailand (soon to take over as DG WTO) and Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha of India, all brought out very significant points about how Globalization is (not) delivering the goods viz (1) Pressurizing the South to open its markets, the North in contrast was adding more and more protectionism to its markets, refusing to purchase goods and commodities from the South (2) the North was cracking down on any subsidy by the South countries on their products while subsidizing their agriculture produce by US $ 1 billion per day and (3) encouraging a major brain drain from the South to the North, thereby putting to virtual waste the vast money on education spent on them by the South. Recently elected President Vincente Fox of Mexico capped the DAVOS message this year, requesting the North to cooperate not only to bring the Third World corrupt to justice but the laundered money back to the countries they belong so that they could be put to good use. The sum total of the DAVOS experience this year was that both individuals and corporations were cognizant that “Bridging the Divide” was extremely important for peace and harmony in a more equitable world.
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